Balancing act
The sound of a palm slapping the forehead has never been confused with applause, but perhaps this will be the exception.
Even now Mark Few wonders what he was thinking. He pleads guilty to a misdemeanor of unworldly – dare we say delusional? – optimism unbecoming of realists and basketball coaches, of which he is both.
He was seduced, tricked, lulled, brainwashed. He is much better now.
So are the Gonzaga Bulldogs, for all their recent woe.
If you’ve been following the sports pages, surely you know that the 2004-2005 edition of the Zags only recently has been sandbagged by an infestation of locusts. First the NCAA swooped in and decided that J.P. Batista, GU’s new big man, didn’t make his junior college bed with hospital corners, and made him ineligible for the first three games of the season. Then luckless swingman Erroll Knight damaged the ligaments in his thumb, an injury that could cost him up to a month.
Facing three games in six days to open the season – and a hellish calendar beyond that – the Zags were suddenly looking at a rotation of just six players ready for prime time, given how they’d decided weeks ago to redshirt freshmen Josh Heyvfelt and David Pendergraft.
This may have been met with a sunny shrug by the sandcastle builders who think the Zags could dress out five walk-ons and row stroke-for-stroke with, say, Duke. But Few gets paid the big bucks for the hard decisions – and even ones like this which aren’t really that hard.
So there was Pendergraft on opening night and again on Sunday afternoon during Gonzaga’s 78-62 dispatch of Montana diving for loose balls, playing garbage man underneath, stroking an open 3-pointer.
Yesterday’s afterthought, today’s panacea.
No ‘shirt for you.
“One of the reasons I came here was because there’s such a team atmosphere,” said the 6-foot-6 redhead from Brewster. “The team needed me, so I did what was best for the team.”
Pendergraft was so significantly in the mix against both Portland State (19 minutes) and Montana (23 minutes) to suggest there may be more to it than triage.
The redshirt, we know, is a common tool to pay forward the eligibility of athletes in a variety of circumstances. Maybe they’re late-bloomers, maybe their skills need work, maybe they need additional strength. Maybe it’s a combination of any or all of them.
At the wing positions in the GU rotation, Pendergraft found himself in crosstown traffic behind Knight, Adam Morrison and transfer Nathan Doudney. Fellow freshman Pierre-Marie Altidor-Cespedes also fills that role when he plays together with point guard Derek Raivio.
“In a pinch, we could slide Sean Mallon in there, too,” said Few. “He’s a good three man, and that’s kind of what we were thinking at the beginning of this.”
And then?
“I was being a little bit of a Polyanna, or whatever,” Few admitted. “I should have known our depth was a little shaky.”
As versatile as GU’s lineup is, there are other issues. Matchups. Fatigue. Even karma.
“Poor Erroll has the propensity of being kind of a Murphy’s Law situation with his injuries,” Few said. “And though we’ve been fortunate with Adam’s (diabetic) situation, you never know. Nothing’s happened yet and hopefully it won’t, but it has to be a consideration in your mind.
“We kind of started scratching our heads and saying, ‘What were we thinking?’ We’d had a perfect fall where nobody got hurt until the day before the opener. I was being too much of a wishful thinker and maybe not anticipating down the road. Now, with him and J.P. and Erroll coming back, we have a pretty solid rotation – nothing like last year, but a good, solid rotation.”
Few leaves the final decision to redshirt up to the player and his parents. For Pendergraft, it may have been all the more difficult because he’d announced his intention to play at GU before his sophomore season in high school. In essence, he’s redshirted for three years already.
“But I saw what the situation was and all the minutes being taken up by the wings,” he said. “And in this program, there’s so much emphasis on execution. When you come in as a freshman, it’s hard to grasp all that. The best decision was to redshirt.
“And then things changed.”
The biggest change is mindset. While a redshirt year is no vacation, there’s a mental edge that’s dulled when you’re not preparing to play in each game – “from eating popcorn on the bench,” as Few joked, “to taking charges.” Pendergraft’s approach betrays no rust in that area. Noted Few, “Basically, we’re throwing a tough, hard-nosed, fundamentally sound kid out there with a great feel for the game. He always seems to be in the right spots.”
And, yes, there will be times when the right spot is on the bench. There will be nights, when the lineup his whole again, that Pendergraft’s playing time will dwindle, opponents against whom he may find himself overmatched. Instead of 23 minutes, he’ll play three – and on those nights maybe he’ll doubt his decision or wonder if he failed the audition.
“No, I don’t really think of it that way,” he insisted. “When Erroll comes back, he’s a huge part of our team, and so my role will change again. But I’ll just do whatever’s needed of me.”
Again.